Baroque Music Forms: Basso Continuo, Suite, Sonata & Concerto

Posted on Mar 16, 2025 in Music

Basso Continuo

The Basso Continuo (BC) is a support system characteristic of the Baroque period. Composers wrote numbers on the bass line notes, indicating to the interpreters the line to be improvised. BC is not an instrument, but an accompanying musical technique that can be developed with any of the polyphonic instruments of the time. The most frequent were the harpsichord, organ, lute, and harp. The BC is present in chamber works (a sonata for flute and BC, for example) as well as orchestral works (an orchestral suite and a concerto for violin, strings, and BC, for example).

Instrumental Forms

There was a great advance in instrumental music that was equal in importance to vocal music. The great impetus given to instrumental music was due to the technical development of instruments. The king par excellence instrument was the violin, and therefore most of the shows were written for it, but also occupied the post of concertmaster cellos, oboes, trumpets, flutes, keys, or organs.

Fugue

The fugue developed in one motion. In essence, the technique is based on imitation. The fugue is a work for multiple voices (3-4), with a complex structure which is basically the constant recurrence of a theme or main melody, accompanied by other secondary issues.

Suite

The base is in the dance music of the Renaissance that typically grouped in pairs (fast, slow). The suite consists of a succession of dances (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Gavotte, Bourré, etc.) with contrasting rhythms that have lost their dance origins.

Sonata

  1. It is an instrumental composition for a small group of instruments and basso continuo consisting of several contrasting movements, often four movements (slow-fast-slow-fast).
  2. Can be composed for a solo instrument. Called trio sonata or trio-sonata, two singing voices and a companion

Concerto

  1. It is an instrumental form that appeared during the last two decades of the seventeenth century and became one of the most important forms of Baroque instrumental music. In the concerto summarizes all the features of Baroque music.

Concerto Grosso

A concerto is a musical form that arose in the Baroque and greatly developed in the following epochs. In essence, it consists of a piece in several movements in which one or more soloists dialogue with an orchestra. When several soloists are involved (as in several of the Brandenburg Concertos of Bach, for example), it is called the concerto grosso. The number of movements in a Baroque concerto is often three, according to the preferred formula of Vivaldi: fast-slow-fast.

The concerto is one of the most important musical forms that emerged in the Baroque. It is, in essence, a piece in several movements in which one or more soloists dialogue with an orchestra. Fruit of the emerging awareness of timbre, this form is also the most important manifestation of the concerted style, which in turn is a consequence of the basic aesthetic principle of the Baroque: the law of contrast. At that time, three types of concertos were primarily written: the concerto grosso (various soloists), concerto ripieno (no specific solo), and the solo concerto. The latter is the one with the greatest impact in later periods.